Straight Life - Art Pepper [225]
It had a feeling like jail, only there were no cells. The Clump had a lot of units and little walkways. I learned that a couple of blocks down, on Kansas Street, they had another complex and more people lived there; that's where they had a school for the little kids. A few people lived at the club and in the apartments across the street from it, but they were squares or people who'd been in Synanon for a long, long time.
In one of the bedrooms of the apartment were two guys who'd been in Synanon for two or three years, "old-timers" they called them. The other bedroom had one bed. I looked in there. It was really classy. It had a big double bed with a nice spread on it. There were pictures on the walls and statues and knickknacks and a TV and a record player with two speakers. I glanced in the closet. The guy had a lot of shoes and clothes. He was really living it up. He was our dorm head. I didn't see him for three or four days, didn't even know who he was. Finally he came one night and introduced himself. He was a tall, black, pimp type cat. When I saw him I realized I'd seen him down at the club working at the Connect, the desk where the cars were given out and all the details of running the club were taken care of. He looked to me like he was loaded. I didn't know if he was or not. He was going with a white, square game player.
I started finding out what was happening and what was expected of me. There were eight people in the front room and three in the other bedrooms. That's eleven people in an apartment where ordinarily maybe only a man and wife and child would be living. Eight of us used one bathroom. You can imagine the confusion. The dorm head was supposed to coordinate everything, but he had a guy called the ramrod who did all the work. There was a set of rules and a set of dorm assignments which changed periodically. I think my first assignment was cleaning the bathroom. It had to be spotless, all the time spotless, with eight people using it. That meant you were cleaning it constantly, that is, if you did it right, which I did. Some guys did the carpet; one did the trash; and someone did the kitchen. We didn't use the kitchen very often-we ate in the main dining room at the club-but sometimes somebody would cook something. After you were there awhile you got "walking around money." It's called WAM. After three months you got a dollar a month; after six months, two dollars; and so on to five dollars; then, after five years, fifty dollars a month. So you could go to the store and buy something, a little popcorn, coffee, or maybe you could hustle something from the big kitchen at the club.
You weren't supposed to hustle anything, but, as in all places, there was hustling going on. Fortunately, right across from me in the bottom bunk was an older guy, Del, and he worked in the kitchen. Most of the live-ins were dopefiends, supposed dopefiends, but there were some heavy alcoholics, too, and that's what Del was. He must have been about fiftyfive. He'd been a cook on the street, but he was one of those hustlers and he knew a million funny stories. We were in a game once, half women and half guys, and some chick was ranking Del because he was so old, and he said, "Well, dearie, I may not be able to cut the mustard, but I sure can lick the jar!" He cracked everybody up; he had a million of those old-time jokes.
Del was cooking in Synanon. He'd come home, and I'd be there, really unhappy, wanting to get loaded, especially during the first months, and he would start telling me great stories out of his past life. I don't know if he was making them up or what, but he'd get me laughing. He didn't trust the other guys because they were so young. He'd look around and then if everything was cool he'd whisper, "Want something